Crossing the Wire (11 page)

“W
HERE ARE THE OTHERS?”
I asked as Rico and I climbed into the back of a coyote van. The seats had been removed. The van had an Arizona plate.

Jarra gave me a scornful look. “The others? That's nothing you need to know.”

In the back of the van were two large backpacks overflowing with packages of tortillas and canned goods, mostly meat and fish. We sat on a big cooler with no ice that was filled with gallon jugs of water. “You might have been wondering why I didn't invite one of you to sit up front in the passenger seat,” Jarra called as he drove out of Sasabe. “My friend is sitting next to me.”

“Who is your friend?” Rico asked.

Jarra reached over and picked something up off the seat—a big pistol in a holster. “Recognize it?”

“Should we?”

“Border Patrol gun—forty-caliber Beretta, semiautomatic. Eleven rounds in the magazine. Reloads in a heartbeat.”

The Mosquito put the gun down and reached for a CD. He turned the volume high as it would go—some punk like himself rapping about the Border Patrol committing crimes against innocent mojados. Jarra rapped along as he fishtailed around the curves on the washboard road, leaving behind a rooster tail of dust. “Hang on,” Rico said. We had to brace to keep from falling to the floor.

I told myself to remember that millions of wets, including Rico's father and mine, had been at the mercy of coyotes. Still, it was impossible not to loathe Jarra. For such a vile person to sport El Cristo Rey on his chest, this was a terrible sin.

For the time being, I didn't have to look at his tattoos. Our driver was wearing a tan soccer jersey to blend in with the desert. His stupid purple forelock was sticking out from above the strap on a green baseball cap worn backward. Gone were the gold chains around his neck, the diamond studs in his ears. The chicken wrangler wanted to blend in with his chickens, in case he got caught.

“There's room for another fifteen or twenty mojados in here,” I joked to Rico. “What's the deal? Seriously, why just us?”

“Who knows?” he grunted. Rico was looking very unhappy.

“I guess we'll pick some up along the way to our starting point,” I said. “Why all this food and water? We didn't have to supply our own?”

Rico didn't bother to answer. If he was annoyed, how was I to feel? He'd called his brother without even bringing it up, arranged
all of this in my name without ever including me. And then there was the fifteen hundred dollars hanging over my head. Easy for him, but how was I going to repay it?

I turned my attention to the rugged Baboquivari Mountains rising sharply from the desert plain. We skirted the foot of them and continued west, in and out of many gullies, on the Mexican side of the Indian reservation. The road had a lot of traffic for an area so thinly settled. We hadn't yet laid eyes on a rancho.

Jarra must have been bored. Suddenly he turned the music down. “Hey, Villa,” he called, meaning me. “Zapata told me you thought you two could cross the border all by yourselves. Hike through the desert, just the two of you.”

“I thought we could,” I admitted.

“That's crazy, Villa. Especially in the Death Season.”

“What's that, Mosquito?”

“If you have to ask, you wouldn't have lasted two days. Death Season is May until October. Have you checked the calendar lately?”

The Mosquito started laughing, then said, “We'll find out soon enough what you're made of, Villa. Zapata said you could handle it. I'm not so sure.”

“Victor Flores is my name.”

“You are a runt, Villa. With a name like flowers, I think you are also too weak.”

“Who cares what you think,” I said, “as long as you get me through.”

Jarra bristled. “You ought to show some respect. I don't like your attitude.”

Shut up and drive, I wanted to say. Suddenly, Jarra was slowing. He seemed to be looking for a turnoff. We had passed many dirt tracks heading north, toward the border, but he was looking south, which made no sense.

Jarra did turn left, to the south, onto a road so rough he had to go into four-wheel drive. The road wound through the brush like a sidewinder. I guessed we were about to pick up a group of mojados who had been stashed where there was shelter and water. We parked with the engine off and waited for half an hour. To the north and west, the sun was going down fast, starting to flatten above the horizon.

The sun had just set when we heard the drone of an airplane. It seemed to be getting closer and closer. Through the brush, we caught a glimpse of a small white single-engine plane it as it came in for a landing. An emergency landing, I thought. There was no airport here, no airstrip.

I was wrong. Jarra fired up the motor and we rolled ahead. Another couple of gullies, and the airstrip was right in front of us. It was rough, crudely hacked out of the cactus and mesquite. The plane had landed safely.

“Are you going to fly us to Tucson?” I joked to Jarra.

“Time to make yourself useful,” he snarled, driving right up to the airplane.

I looked at Rico, but he didn't have any answers. We rolled back
the side door of the van and got out as Jarra threw open the back. His pistol was stuck under his belt. “How many?” Jarra yelled at the pilot, who had moved to the back of the plane and opened the side door.

“Thirteen, as arranged,” the potbellied pilot yelled back. He was sweating, and he looked nervous. “Let's go, I want to get out of here.” He stooped to lift a heavy package down to Jarra. It was bigger than a bag of cement and entirely wrapped in brown plastic packing tape.

“Hey, you two,” Jarra yelled at us. “I hand them to you, you pack them in the back of the van. Hurry up!”

By this time I had figured out why the pilot was so nervous, and in such a hurry. “Drugs,” I whispered to Rico.

“Just do what he says,” Rico said from the side of his mouth.

Jarra flicked his donkey tail. “Hurry! Help me with these bales.”

I was about to say no, and see what would happen. “Don't do anything stupid,” Rico said. “He'll shoot you.”

“One thousand and forty pounds of prime mota,” Jarra crowed as we drove off a few minutes later. The plane was already airborne. Jarra started playing a CD really loud, and pounding on the steering wheel.

“Where's he going with this marijuana?” I asked Rico quietly.

“No idea,” Rico said.

“You think he's going to drop it off, then take us to meet our group?”

Rico shook his head, whatever that meant.

Jarra turned the sound down. “What's up with you mules back there?”

“I'm no mule,” I said, but suddenly everything came into focus. I gave Rico a hard look, which he ignored.

“Remember, Jarra,” Rico said, “we're only carrying food or water.”

Jarra turned around and grinned like a smiling dog. “Oh, excuse me, I forgot. What difference does it make?”

Jarra turned the music up again. I glared at Rico. “What's going on? Come on, tell me. Didn't you say Reynaldo put up the money?”

“I told you before, I never had his phone number.”

“You lied to me?”

“It was for your own good. We work off what we owe. One trip, that's all we have to make. They wanted us to make two, but I made them agree to one. And we don't have to carry the drugs.”

“As if that will make any difference if we get caught helping drug smugglers? We'll go to prison, maybe for the rest of our lives. Idiot, what were you thinking?”

“I thought my name was Rico.”

“It's Liar,” I said. “Your name is Liar. How could you do this to me? To my family? You've betrayed me.”

“Settle down. It's for your own good. We didn't stand a chance in the desert, just the two of us. How were we going to find water, tell me that? They know where the water is. They'll have transportation for us all the way to Tucson. How were we going to get to Tucson?”

“You said we were going to take our chances catching a ride. With the Indians—remember?”

“Well, I got us a ride. So, settle down. We were in a desperate situation. If I told you, you wouldn't have gone along.”

“You're right about that.”

“You'll thank me later.”

“I'll thank you right now. Thanks for nothing, 'mano.”

I had nothing more to say to him. I was angrier than I'd been in my whole life. Furious.

I thought about bailing out of the van, into the darkness, but my backpack was out of reach and Jarra was watching me closely in the mirror. If I got away without him shooting me down, what then? Even if I made it back to Sasabe, how was I going to start over and cross the border? Rico knew all of this, knew I'd have to stick with him.

I was so upset, I hadn't been following the twists and turns the van was taking in the dark, with no headlights. We'd been climbing, gradually, and the rocks had been getting bigger. At the last, Jarra drove into an enclosure of gigantic boulders, like a bandit hideaway, which is what it turned out to be. Two other vehicles were parked there, with shadowy figures milling around behind the glow of cigarettes. As soon as we drove in, they started unloading the bales from the back of our van.

The mules looked rough, like the hardened criminals they no doubt were. They used bungee cords to attach the drug bales to wooden packframes with canvas shoulder straps. Those two huge
backpacks we were supposed to carry, stuffed full of food, felt like they were loaded with rocks. I jammed my pocketknife and pliers in an outside pocket. Our own backpacks with food, water, and clothes were going to be left behind.

The mules were saddling up. We did the same. I could barely lift my pack to my knee and swing it onto my shoulders. I staggered, but I stood. Everybody bent to pick up a gallon jug of water. Rico and I did the same. A man with a scar through his mustache came over and told us he was the boss. “Morales is my name,” he said. “I don't know you from anybody, but we lost a couple of men. What is this about you carrying only food?”

Rico got us into this. He was going to have to do the explaining. “Jarra promised,” Rico said lamely.

Morales spat on Rico's shoes. “What are you, Migra informers, or simply fools?”

“Fools,” Rico said.

Morales showed his teeth and laughed. “For now, you fools can carry the food. Those packs are at least as heavy as a bale of mota. I'm going to be watching you two very carefully. Don't mess with me, or you won't live to regret it.”

“Wonderful,” I said, when Morales was at a safe distance. Rico wasn't saying a thing.

The mule train started out under a brilliant full moon. It numbered seventeen: thirteen carrying the mota, two of us carrying the food, and two gangsters with light backpacks. Unlike the polleros who smuggled people, the drug smugglers were armed. Morales
walked in front with an assault rifle. It had one of those big, curving ammunition clips. No doubt he had extra clips in his backpack. Jarra, taking up the rear, had that semiautomatic handgun at his hip.

The pace was brutal, the weight on my back crushing. The route wound among car-sized boulders, always uphill. The night was hot. I was breathing hard and dripping with sweat.

It took less than an hour to reach the border. It felt like an eternity. We passed the packs across, then crawled underneath. Only four strands here. Morales and Jarra disguised our tracks on both sides of the fence.

We saddled up and started into Arizona. Once again, I had crossed the wire.

I
DIDN'T KNOW IF
I
HAD
the strength. I had to lean into the climb, dig in with every step, push off with everything in my legs. The night air was steaming. I was breathing hard. The sweat dripped into my eyes and stung. In the moonlight, giant cactus looked like tortured humans, arms twisted up and down. Some stood tall as telephone poles. Everything looked dreamlike, but this was no dream. I had become a mule.

Whether Rico was in front of me or behind, I had no idea. I was staying away from him. It was anger that got me through those first miles, along with hurt, disbelief, and disillusionment. How could he have deceived me like that?

My lungs were on fire. I thought my heart would explode. The gallon of water in my hand felt heavy as an adobe brick. By the time we stopped to rest, I'd never been so thirsty in my life. I took only a few sips. There was no telling how long my gallon would
have to last. I bent over double to try to get the weight off my shoulders, if only for a few seconds. None of the mules were asking how far we were going or when we might get there. We were only pack animals.

Two minutes, and Morales was yelling, “Let's get going!”

I told myself to be on the lookout for the Border Patrol. I had to be ready to drop my pack and run. But as the smuggler's trail continued up and down the flanks of the mountains, winding among boulders, thorny trees, and endless cactus, I had to keep up with the mule in front of me and couldn't afford any looking around. My eyes stayed on the rocky footing and the thorny scrub punishing my hands and arms. Everything that grew bristled with needles and claws, and reached out to draw blood.

The punishment went on all night. The moon had nearly crossed the sky by the time we were finally told to take off our packs. Rico dropped his next to mine. “Look, turtle,” he said.

“Don't call me Turtle,” I growled, and took a swig of water. I was down to half.

He pointed. “No, look at the turtle.”

Twenty feet away, a tortoise was crawling into its burrow. I looked at it. I didn't say a thing.

The first light rimmed the ridge at our backs. The desert was dead still, as if holding its breath before an explosion. I saw a tarantula making haste, a scorpion disappearing under a rock. One thing was for sure: When the sun came up, we were going to fry.

The boss came over and told us to break out the food. “One tin
of meat for everybody,” Morales ordered. “Two tortillas.”

My back was so stiff I could barely move. Rico got to his feet. He started pulling food out of my pack instead of his. It took me a second to realize he was doing me a favor. “These packs would break the back of a mule with four legs,” he said.

I didn't bother to reply.

Rico passed out the food. The meat was jellied ham. I broke off small pieces and ate them slowly, with the tortillas. I licked my fingers for the salt and the grease. As dawn spread a soft orange glow across the desert floor below, the stillness came to a sudden end. Every bird in the desert, it seemed, began to sing at the same time. I took out the pliers and began to pull cactus needles from my arms, hands, and ankles. The pliers were soon making the rounds of the other mules. I never saw them again.

The mules were pointing at something—a herd of wild pigs, a stone's throw away. Unbelievably, they were taking bites out of the prickly pear cactus. I thought of my sisters, all the work they would do with those cactus pads to make nopales. Jarra aimed his forefinger and thumb, squeezed, yelled, “Die!” The wild pigs took off in a clatter.

As the light came up, we could see a grid of rusty red roads running east and west through the flats of the reservation below. White specks were raising dust on those roads—Border Patrol, Jarra announced, as if we didn't know. “They catch people like flies down there.”

The oldest mule, who had a receding hairline and a perpetual
grin carved in the lines of his face, pointed at a shiny, stationary disc in the western sky. “Hey, Mosquito,” he said. “What is that thing? Spaceship? Mojados from space?”

“Don't you know anything, Paco? That's Fat Albert, the Migra blimp. Don't worry, the scum who live inside can't see us way over here. They've never put a blimp over these mountains. They think there is nothing to see.”

“Why is that, Mosquito?”

“Too rugged for lazy Mexicans, that's what they think. They are fools! Even their helicopter patrols are useless here. Where we go, there is so much cover, they have as much chance of finding Osama bin Laden.”

The mules all found this very funny.

“What about those new drones, Mosquito?” Paco asked with pretended seriousness. “The ones that fly high, with no pilot?”

“They don't work, either. Even their infrared cameras can't see us because of all the rocks. The rocks give off heat, same as we do.”

“I think the Mosquito, like Fat Albert, is full of hot gas,” Paco said. “Nobody light a match.”

Once again, the mules had a good laugh. This time, Jarra was offended. “You guys need to learn some respect,” he said, and put his hand on his Beretta.

It got very quiet. Even Paco's grin disappeared. Evidently the mules believed that the Mosquito was crazy enough to start shooting.

Morales spat, then grabbed up his assault rifle. “Let's get moving.
We have a long way to go. I'm warning everyone. If you fall behind today, you will die.”

I cringed. I had been sure we were going to hide from the sun, like the desert animals.

As we got going, a dawn breeze touched my face, but the coolness was gone as soon as it arrived. The sun rose and shot into the sky. Before long it was beating on us like a hammer. The earth was on fire, and so was I.

It wasn't long before my cheeks were burning, my ears and my eyelids, too. My lips began to crack, my tongue to thicken. Swallowing became very difficult. The water in my jug was hot as tea from the stove. I drank it, careful not to spill a drop. My body was spilling enough. My scalp was drenched with sweat. So were my armpits, my neck, and my arms. Suddenly—I couldn't tell why—I stopped sweating. I started licking my lips to keep them from splitting. It made them worse.

I was getting dizzy, and I began to stumble. I had a rash on my arms and a bad headache. My fingers were swollen. Through my sneakers, the ground felt like volcano lava. My tongue was swollen. My thirst was unbearable. I had no spit in my mouth, only a thick dry paste.

I had been saving the last few gulps of water. I needed them. I drank every drop.

I had to get away, go somewhere in my mind. I went home to Los Árboles, to the sweet mountain air of home. I had the hoe in my hands and was weeding. The corn was already six inches high.
There was moisture in the air.

Suddenly I could hear the rain. I could hear it distinctly. I was in the house, in my room with Chuy. We were lying on our backs listening to the night rain as the lightning cracked above El Cubilete and thunder rolled and rumbled through the mountains. We could hear the water rushing down the gutters and filling up the rain barrels. “Victor, don't go,” Chuy was pleading. “You know I'm afraid of the lightning.” “It's okay,” I kept telling him. “You're a big boy now.”

I found myself stopped in my tracks. The mule train had come to a standstill. Someone ahead had stumbled and fallen. The mule was trying to rise under his eighty pounds of mota. He fell again. Someone finally pulled him to his feet. His knee was bleeding. I felt a sensation that didn't make any sense. My skin was getting cooler instead of hotter. No mistake, I was cooler all over. I raked my forearm. It was dry and flaky as an old snakeskin. When I blinked, my eyelids scraped. My body was going haywire. The heat was going to kill me.

We started up again. The next to fall was the mule in front of me. Somehow I found the strength to pull him to his feet. Morales let everybody rest. The mule I had helped, young and not so tough-looking, turned and thanked me. He wanted me to know who he was, in case he didn't make it. His name was Cornelio Martinez. I was to get a message somehow to his mother in Nogales, in the colonia of Solidaridad.

“You'll make it,” I said.

“My brother didn't. He died last January, in the cold.”

“Doing what?” I asked.

“Smuggling. He couldn't keep up. He had hepatitis.”

We staggered through midday and long into the afternoon. I went many places in my mind. I had conversations with many people—my father, Julio, Miguel, my sister Mari Cruz, the priest at the shrine of El Cristo Rey, even with Rico's teacher working at the Laundromat in Los Angeles. She said she could get me a job there and also give me English lessons. She was very beautiful. I told her I would appreciate the English lessons, but I preferred to work outdoors.

Most of my imaginary conversations were with Rico. They weren't really conversations. They were arguments, and he kept defending himself. I told him I should have known better, after what he did to his parents. I told him he was no kind of friend. That ours had never been a friendship of equals.

Once again, the mule train stopped dead. I shook myself back to the present. For the fourth or fifth time, someone had fallen. It was Rico.

He was on his knees, struggling to rise. No one was helping him up. Our eyes met. For a second, I wasn't going to help him. He looked awful. I felt awful. I pulled him to his feet. “Thanks, Turtle,” he said.

I didn't know I could produce words, even if I tried. “It's nothing,” I managed.

“Victor, I'm not doing so well.”

“Same here.”

We staggered on, down into a canyon where a seep trickled from a cluster of ferns on a rock ledge. Only one mule at a time could get to the water, and the two of us were going to be the last to drink. Pretty soon it became obvious—the seep ran so slowly, this was going to take hours.

I was light-headed and delirious. I had to get out of the sun, and fast, before I collapsed. Shade was the only thought on my mind, if I was thinking at all. I stumbled off looking for some. The mules were all strung out, tucked in every little piece of shade and waiting their turn at the water. Another hundred yards was an overhanging boulder, if I could reach it.

Around the back side of the boulder I found a sliver of shade. I got down and was wedging myself into it when rattling erupted, fast and angry, unmistakable and close.
Snake!
cried every nerve in my body. I felt the bite in my ankle as I tried to leap away, managing only to hit the top of my head on the boulder.

I must have screamed. Rico came running, along with some others. I never saw the snake, only white pain in my skull. I heard them bashing the devilish thing with rocks. I took off my hat. There was a new rip in the straw. I felt to see if I had a new gash. My fingers came back with only a smear of blood.

“Did it bite you?” Rico was saying.

“Yes,” I said, my fear racing out of control. I got down to look at my ankle. The marks of the fangs were plain to see.

“That kid is as good as dead,” I heard one of the mules say.

All my life, somehow, I had known this was coming.